Overview & Goal: Skull interference is the principal obstacle for focused ultrasound treatment for many target areas in the brain. This project aimed to provide a tool to calculate and visualize this interference and then explore different head positions and orientations that might mitigate it. We attempted to produce a program that could input both a model generated from patient CT data along with the geometry for the ultrasound system in use and then use the data to calculate intersection points between the transducers and the skull. The program would need to record the locations of these intersections, the quality of the resulting focus, and visualize them in an interactive manner.
Results/Findings/Outcome: We accomplished an initial model. Ease of use and performance optimizations are the next step.
“I learned the most about computer graphics. One of my majors was Computer Science, but I did not previously have experience with rendering libraries, shaders, and graphics development, all of which were important for the project.” – on an important learning point during his internship
“I aim to further develop this tool into something useful in both clinical and research settings. The uses include case-by-case skull modeling prior to individual treatments, as well as in exploration of optimum head positions while targeting specific or difficult-to-reach areas of the brain.” – on how his accomplishments impact the field of focused ultrasound